Joseph S. Nye Jr. (1937–2025) was a prominent American political scientist and statesman, best known for developing the concept of soft power—a relatively recent addition to the elaborate sophistry of international politics.
In light of recent shifts in international diplomacy, most visibly shaped and constrained by enduring US hegemony, it is increasingly difficult to take the discipline of Inter...
The article accuses IR of being a professionally credentialled rhetoric of power, serving to legitimize contemporary domination rather than objectively explain global events. It suggests that by normalizing and managing existing power structures, IR has contributed to the continuation of hegemonic power. The article questions the universality of Westphalian sovereignty, the moral innocence of aid, and the fiction that order can be separated from coercion as part of a call for intellectual honest...